Month: September 2023

It is a journey of Hope and Intention.

People from 12 global nations… gathered in the mostly-virtual land of Intentional Creativity® for the adventure.

We began, at the Equinox, by honoring our ancestors. If you’ve been reading along for a bit, you know that I have a pretty big collection of those folks and I know their names. I think the thing we sometimes lose track of is that we ALL have very big collections of those folks!

(I’m way better at names and stories but the math is mind boggling! You can look it up if you’re curious…)

We also recognized that, for almost all of us, the land on which we were standing, paint brushes at hand, was once the home of other peoples. In my case, they were the people of the United Cherokee AniYunWiYa Nation.

Much of our intentionally inclusive medicine painting adventure was about learning trust with ourselves, so that whatever limiting parts of our perceptions or habits or beliefs which are ready to be moved can be! In an embodied way!!!

Medicine Painting is all about allowing our deep identity to speak as we paint. It is permission to be who we are. Not external permission, so much – though that is there – but an experiment with internal permission!

If you’re like me, this may be a relatively new concept for your Inner Child!

My personal Inner Child learned that she was the smart kid. The good kid. The big sister in charge of keeping the little sister out of trouble.

(This – mind you – is not an assumption that my parents meant me to learn these things. It’s just what I learned!)

So… it was at about this point in the journey that things got complicated for me. I wanted to rebel! Really!!!

You see, I was totally in love with what had happened on my canvas and I was NOT a fan of the next right thing, commonly known as big, scary glaze!

And, yes… this was a familiar feeling! So, while the rest of the painters glazed, I stared at my canvas. I tended in the chat, which was part of my team contribution to the adventure. (I love tending!) I even confessed my stuck-ness in public!

Then, it came to me! I would wait until good daylight, the next morning, and take a really great photo. Then, I would glaze – and spatter! – before it was time to begin again with the group. (And, yes… it’s the photo you see at the top!)

And so, I did.

Day 2 was quite the adventure!

Kind of ironically, it had a whole lot to do with what I refer to as Filters! Turns out you can paint them, too. Or, paint what they mean!

Here’s a peek… we can choose filters different than those we grew up with when we are longing for different outcomes! Even if others – shall we say – aren’t quite on board!

A lot of the rest had to do with who we choose to be. I’ve been working on that one for quite a while. And it has, indeed, meant claiming a lot of things that used to get me in trouble.

Like any notion at all of fierce. Or, worse yet, rebel! And yet, in certain contexts, with my interpretations, those notions are a huge part of who I am.

The Fiercely Compassionate Rebel Grandmother!

For a brief time, complete with wet paint, my adventure looked like this:

It still does, in my heart. And, with some fixing, it will be back, pretty close to this, with the addition of some roses and a bit of coding. (Learning is not always straightforward!)

For now, I’m tired. And there’s one thing more my painting needs me to share.

My wild child wants me to know that I have found my Way of Love.

And a big part of that is helping people like you find and claim their own paths! That’s why the Filters pre-sale offer is good for a few more days! (It’s a really good deal… and we’re really close to launching!) Just click HERE for all the details!!!

ps… huge thanks to Shiloh Sophia McCloud, Jonathan McCloud, and all the Intentional Creativity® team for Flow Nouveau and Origins and all the other utterly amazing things coming up! Questions??? Ask me!

True confession… my head feels, in this moment, like someone has taken my neatly sorted plastic boxes of quilt scraps and dumped them in the road and run over them a few times!

All the bits which made sense among their color or pattern or designer friends are now in chaos.

And yes, I’ve been watching the news.

We’re going to call that context for the story I want to share…

Fair warning… a bit of time travel will be involved!

In July of this year I was in France. Not just in the contemporary nation of acres of blooming sunflowers and fabulous food and art, but in the places where my ancestors stood in the Middle Ages. In the places where some of them lost their lives for their spiritual beliefs.

In January of 1989 I was in Hungary with a group of students from Columbia Theological Seminary. I passed through customs into – and out of – a communist country. I sat in worship with women on one side of the sanctuary and men on the other. Church was permitted. Christian Education was not.

I visited a Jewish Rabbinical Seminary – the only one in Eastern Europe to survive World War II – where students removed their shoes before entering the library… a place which had not been permitted to acquire any new writings since before the war began.

There was a lot of conversation on that journey about the Protestant Reformation.

The simplistic explanation for that time in history would be the break of Lutherans and Calvinists from the Roman Catholic Church.

I’ve recently learned that The Reformation was considerably more complicated than I once understood. And I had relatives involved in that, too. Many of them European women with enough resources to be able to read and write and support the education of girls.

Lately, l’ve taken to watching Madam Secretary on Netflix. For the uninitiated, Secretary of State, Elizabeth McCord, is married to a religious ethics scholar named Henry. In one episode, Henry explains that the Reformation happened because of the printing press… because scripture could be printed in the language of real people who could then read for themselves instead of only hearing what priests chose to share, in Latin.

Which brings us back to the news. Here’s what I heard…

The battles over the Department of Justice, and the national budget, and election fraud, and having enough personnel to run the military, and civil rights, and the education our children will receive all boils down to who gets to decide who gets to decide.

And, in my opinion, in this place at this time, the answer still needs to be we, the people.

Which, clearly, isn’t easy.

It means that we, the people need to show up. Even when it’s hard.

And, yes, I took a break today for painting and energy healing!

Then, I went back to the thing I call Filters, and my process for getting it out into the world.

It’s coming! Soon!!! (The videos are done…)

And, it’s my best way of being the printing press in the face of all the AI stuff in our world.

For now, though… one more story from Hungary. A group of us were speaking with a young Hungarian seminary student. He told us that he and his friends were raised with the need to wake up every morning and find out who was in charge and where they lived.

I was horrified, then.

I’m way too close to relating, now.

If you’re still reading, I’ll bet you already get it, but please, please, please… ask the hard questions. Get involved. And check your voter registration! Your voice matters… now more than ever before in your life.

And, yes…

I have 2 granddaughters trying very hard to grow up in this world!

The Rev Dr Susan L Boardman, Gnostic Judeo-Christian Mystic Medicine Woman, walking the Way of Love (aka: The Fiercely Compassionate Rebel Grandmother, For Rent!)

ps… the special pre-sale offer for the Filters journey is still available, but not for much longer! Get all the goodies at a considerable savings by acting now. Just click here!

pps… the photo at the top is underlayers of a painting which became known as SuperPowers and you could have leggings like this! (Really!!!) Wearable Art! And, if you see more pairs you’d like, use the special code at checkout… Buy 2 – Save $8

First, chaos is a very good description of my dreams last night!

Dreams of the been here before sort. And the pace picked up considerably after I went back to sleep early this morning. (Grandmother Moon was on the job!)

The short version is that I was wandering in the place where history meets the present moment, no matter how much we might wish it didn’t!

And, yes… we’re talking 9/11. How could we not be???

On September 11, in 2001, I was propped up in bed, days out of the hospital, laptop at hand, working on final galley proofs for an upcoming issue of Monday Morning Magazine, of which I was the the editor. Then, the phone rang.

It was the Legendary Husband who said, simply, “Turn on the TV!” and hung up.

I did. And you know what I saw.

Chaos for which I had no box in my brain!

Phone calls were the next right thing. I knew people who worked in the Pentagon. Then, pain meds for the blown disc in my back. Then, panic.

I was supposed to get on a plane to California. My first semester at Pacifica Graduate Institute was about to begin and I was suddenly terrified. Of flying.

Our September class was cancelled. The reading was not. And, when I woke this morning, the first place I headed was a particular bookshelf in my section of our vast library.

Bound copies of Monday Morning from my time as editor. And, rather ironically, a collection of papers from my time at Pacifica. Not all of them… just the ones that mattered to me!

Then, a brief detour to another bookshelf… the one where the biggest, best things I know live. It didn’t take me long to put my hands on this:

Thus empowered with context and memories, I was ready for tea.

First, hear me say that if you haven’t read Van Eenwyk’s book, please do. It’s brilliant. In fact, the preacher/therapist in me appreciates it even more since I’ve become an artist!

For now, though… a bit of my paper entitled, like this post, Notes on an Encounter with Chaos. It begins this way:

I have a secret.

When I get really stressed — when the chaos in my world gets too big or too close, I iron.

Please don’t call me Martha Stewart! It’s not about impressing the neighbors. Nor do I believe it’s impossible for normal humans to feel loved if their pillowcases are not perfectly pressed, monogram and all.

I iron because it is a kinesthetic, olfactory, visual experience of making order out of chaos. Vintage linens are best. If there aren’t any around waiting to be ironed, which is a rare circumstance in my home, I’ll even wash some just so I can iron them!

What I’ve realized, though, as I pondered this assignment, is that my ironing is not simply about the comfort of warm linen under my fingertips, or that peculiar clean scent of steam, or even the gratifying sight of stacks of scraps redeemed from the laundry basket and made beautiful again but, rather, it’s about distracting my either/or conscious mind so that my more creative both/and unconscious mind can work.

Kind of surprisingly, in retrospect, the next line reads:

Painting works, too, by the way!

And, it does! In many, many more ways than I knew in 2001!!! (Starting with the hundreds of dots I made last night!)

In case you’re wondering… no, I don’t iron so much anymore. It’s the order out of chaos bit that matters! Perhaps more now, than ever.

You see, it feels as if there is more chaos to come. Not only in the USA, but in the world.

I have a plan. A three-part plan. It’s not all poetic yet, but it exists and, yes, this is where my Medicine Basket comes in!

1. Re-read Archetypes & Strange Attractors.
2. Keep creating! Paint, words, models for sharing… all the things my mind is quilting together in new ways! (Like Filters!)
3. Put myself out there. (Gulp!) From the book hatching inside me – already known as Revelation! – to teaching and coaching – to an absolute dedication to voting. It’s time!

And one more thing… a vocabulary lesson!

It’s a word you’ve probably heard me mention before. A Hebrew word.

tzcar

It means to remember. It also means to remind! And, now, dear heart, is the time for that!

ps… need help putting yourself out there? Or getting ready to? That’s what I do! To get started, just ask the calendar elves for 45 min. My gift. And, hurry! The fall calendar is filling up!!!

pps… the lovely lady, below, is from an Insight painting. She’s also the cover for turning point vol. 2, a number one bestselling anthology project with chapters by cool writers with great visions for activating the Divine Feminine Within. (And lots of great give-aways!) Just click to get yours!

Well, actually, a couple of them!

The Legendary Husband arrived home from his annual Labor Day field trip with a not-yet-specified coughing and snuffling thing. It’s less scary than it was, but – given the last couple of years – I’m anxious.

I had to skip physical therapy, given the germ uncertainty.

The dryer died. The new one arrived, but without a magic thingy to make it – you know – work. And, yes… there’s laundry waiting in heaps. At least until Friday!

Then there’s the Green Acres adventure. (Remember the old TV show???) Let’s just say that we are seeking an electrician with Nancy Drew aspirations!

Nobody’s sleeping well. Including the people firing guns at about 3:30 am. (I wish they were fireworks, but they weren’t.)

Blessedly, those are not the only things that are true!

The studio has been re-imagined enough to make space for really big canvases.

My paintings are feeling chatty, which I love. And, last night, my Sanctuary #wip actually offered to be sanctuary for my self-in-need-of-soothing.

Not dots, this time. (There are already lots of those!) Instead, roses! (The ones in the glimpse above.) It’s one of those whole brain kinds of things!

The red backgrounds were already in place. It was time for outlines and petals, even though this is not the way we Intentional Creativity® folks often do this sort of thing.

There’s something about following the spaces which are already there that I find relaxing. I think it’s because I don’t have to cope with everything at once. Just a specific space in a specific moment. And – at least in my case – no straight lines!!!

I shared the painting today, in a place where my sister-artists hang out. And I listened to them sharing their work. Ah-hahs and wonderings and what-ifs. All in a safe place.

Which often feels like a whole miracle in itself!

And the inspiration began to flow.

How to deal with the faces in my painting.

Hoots from a owl, longing to be included. And, flowers. Lilies and sunflowers. Because – well – duh!

Here’s the big picture at the moment…

Now, I’ll grant you… my painting journey isn’t going to solve all the problems of the world. (Not even all the problems of my personal world!)

It is helping me to access my soul resources. To remember to hope. To have more tools and perspectives to share with others on the journey.

Here’s an example:

Despite the seeming chaos around me, I was in a meeting today. The kind with sharing and actual listening. One of our leaders spoke of an article she’d read about safe green spaces being too rare in economically struggling urban areas.

A name popped instantly into my head. The name of a local county commissioner who gets it. This guy is all about creative changes like planting food crops on library lawns. And he has the platform to tell more people.

So, Havi tells a story. I hear it. I tell Ted. (Tomorrow!) Ted tells more people, some of whom make budget and policy decisions. And maybe – just maybe – we Atlanta folks have something to do that matters.

And, then, I tell you…

Why???

It’s one of those each one, teach one things.

And, then, there’s my other answer…

I have 2 granddaughters growing up in this world!

One of them is turning 16 tomorrow. And, before too long, she’ll be able to vote!

So, here’s my question…

What’s YOUR Big Why?

Really! I want to know. Leave me a comment, below. Or email me. suesvoice@gmail.com

It’s going to take a whole lot of us… and I have ideas!

For now, though, my next right thing is more painting and pondering.

Nope! Make that painting and wondering!!!

ps… the each one, teach one thing is, according to the College of Education at the University of Arizona, an African proverb that became known in the USA during slavery when Africans were being denied education. When someone learned how to read or write, it became their responsibility to teach someone else… spreading knowledge for the benefit of community!

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